Here comes the government shutdown and Obamacare spam

A recent predictable surge of domain name registrations related both the US government shutdown and the new health care law, a.k.a. Obamacare, is a sign that malicious emails and web sites are to come.

John Bambanek is reporting on the SANS Internet Storm Center that there has been a rush of domain name registrations in recent days related to the US government partial shutdown. There have also been many recent registrations related to the recently implemented Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

Domain name registrations with the potential for confusion and abuse regularly follow major news events. These are noteworthy only in that they present more potential for fraud than most. Fake web sites are rendered more credible by having a credible-sounding domain name in the address bar.

One example of recent registrations is healthcaregov.com, playing on the legitimate name healthcare.gov, where people can sign up through the Federal health care exchange. The domain appears to be parked, based on the home page, but there could be subdomains and deeper pages with content.

healthcaregov.com was registered on September 27 of this year by Synergy Technologies, LLC, of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a small island nation in the West Indies. Synergy Technologies owns a large number of domains and appears to be a domain broker/investor.

govshutdown.com was registered on September 30 anonymously on GoDaddy and is for sale through GoDaddy.